[qemu-discuss] patch enabling serial (tty) support

Marion Hakanson
Tue, 19 Jun 2007 03:00:02 -0000

Folks,

First, let me thank everyone involved for making QEMU available on the
Solaris platform.  It''s turning out to be really handy....

Here at work we''re required to use GroupWise calendaring (at least for
the time being), and I''m trying to get a bit more organized, so thought
I''d start (again) using a Palm handheld to take my calendar, etc. with
me.
The new Palm''s all come with USB, so I was disappointed to see no
apparent
way for a guest OS to talk to a host USB port.  USB is experimental on
Linux only, I''ve read.

Fortunately, serial port access appears to be well developed, and one
can get an add-on serial cable for modern Palm''s.  However, the serial
code  evidently was not compiled in to the currently-available packages
in the OpenSolaris QEMU downloads area.  Being the impatient sort,
I took a look, then rearranged some "#if" statements, and got it
to compile in my Solaris-10U3 environment.

The resulting QEMU works fine for connecting to a real tty;  I was able
to sync my old RS232 Palm III with the Palm Desktop app running on a
guest Windows 98 VM.  Baud rate appears to change when apps on the guest
change settings, so things are definitely connected in a useful way.

The patch is a little sloppy in that I didn''t test the pty option,
which is also now "live" in the Solaris QEMU, but it meets my needs
for the moment, and I''ll submit the patch shortly to qemu-devel so
they can make of it what they will.

Regards,

Marion